GENTLE REVOLUTION

"For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle (1 Corinthians 14:8)?"

Biblically, there were many functions associated with the blast of trumpets amongst God’s people. They called God’s people to assemble in certain places designated by the Lord. They blasted God’s Jubilee that was used to proclaim liberty throughout the land. They called leaders to assemble with the purpose of seeking God for national direction. They were used to prepare God’s people for battle. They sounded to alert God’s people of the proper time to embark on great journeys. They signaled God’s manifested deliverance against their enemies.

They preceded important announcements from appointed dignitaries. They were sounded to cease hostilities and usher in peace. They were instruments of praise that were used to inspire the high praises of God. They signaled the call to honor and celebrate feast days, holy convocations, solemn assemblies, and official times of fasting. They blew to warn God’s people of danger or even divine judgment in the midst of them.

In the New Testament, heavenly trumpets blasted to prepare the way for powerful eschatological events. The Apostle John received much of the Revelation after the heavenly trumpets sounded. This list is not exhaustive, but it provides a cursory view of the importance of trumpets as defined by God’s Word.

The Apostle Paul, in our opening Scripture, teaches the critical nature of correctly handling the trumpet and the sound it produces. I’m not an expert, but it seems to me that with all the purposes associated with the trumpet, it is vital to give a clear, distinct sound. One that would prepare God’s people for a proper response to perform His will. If the sound was uncertain, the message could become garbled, murky, and confusing. This would have a devastating affect upon God’s people. They would inevitably become paralyzed, neutralized, and incapacitated to follow the Lord in humble obedience. Recent decades of Church history could attest to this dilemma. Especially in times that tend to try the Church with overwhelming pressure to succumb and be conformed to the Spirit of the Age.

As licentiousness amongst American citizens and the acquisition of power by our civil government has steadily increased, it is important to ascertain the condition of the Lord’s trumpet in the pulpits of America. First of all, is the trumpet even being sounded? Isaiah the prophet declared, "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins (Isaiah 58:1)." Unfortunately for the health, soundness, and wholeness of the Church, if men of God did this today it would be considered treason against the Gospel, unloving towards God’s people, and a misrepresentation of God’s holy character. My, how the mighty have fallen from our understanding of God and His Word.

If there is a faint blast sounding from a pulpit here and there, is it clear and distinct? Does it rally, mobilize, and call God’s people to be like the children of Issachar who knew the times and knew what God’s people should do in the midst of troubling times (1 Chronicles 12:32). Where is the prophetic call to reform our ways and doings before God? Who will arise to apply God’s tourniquet to stop the hemorrhaging of the bloodlust and perversion that threatens our national security? Who has the courage to pour salt into the deadly wounds of our moral rot? Do we perceive our sins have reached heaven and that we are vulnerable to God’s increasing judgments? Can we not discern the onslaught of our enemies from without and the wicked agenda foisted upon us from foes within our own national household?

If we do, certainly the time demands a clarion call to go forth and resonate throughout the pulpits of America. Men of God need to place the trumpet of the Lord to their mouths and sound the alarm. Our message needs to recapture the Church to be God’s instrument of reform, renewal, restoration, and reconciliation in our nation once again. Somehow the Church must regain her prophetic voice. We must break out of our self-imposed, spiritual ghettos and reenter the public square and market place of ideas with the claims of Christ and the truth of God’s Word. We must rise to provide moral guidance and help tenderize our national conscience that has been seared by our national sins, such as, abortion, homosexuality, and other idolatrous abominations.

In short, it is time to commence a GENTLE REVOLUTION. Not a revolution of guns, bombs, and carnal weapons, but a spiritual, moral, and godly revolution. To help define what I’m advocating, it would be prudent for the Church to take a lesson from the turbulent times associated with the 1960s. It was the decade that produced a major paradigm shift that rejected America’s godly heritage in exchange for the brutal darkness of paganism that ill-affects us to this day.

There is no question that the radicals of the sixties perceived some hypocrisy enshrined within the hallowed institutions of America, such as the family, the church, the state, and our educational systems. They struggled with certain aspects of the gates of our land that they believed didn’t ring true. Whether they were true in their assessments or not, I’ll let others decide. One thing is sure, instead of being young reformers that worked to restore these important pillars of our nation, they simply rebelled and trashed them. The treacherous course they blazed now sets the agenda that makes our nation vulnerable in the midst of this dangerous, fallen world.

The sixties generation created a rebellious sub-culture that eventually became the wicked establishment that we contend against today. Our nation, through their ungodly influence, now finds itself in the pathetic state described by Isaiah the prophet. He declared, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink: Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him (Isaiah 5:20-23)!" This is why if one seeks to be a rebel with a cause today, one must seek to live a godly life, simply because the mores of our nation have been defined by the enemies of the cross. Therefore they must be resisted by the Church, less we conform to this world system that is in defiance to God’s loving rule (Romans 12:1,2).

Based upon the sixties model, perhaps it is time for the Church to start a Kingdom sub-culture that rebels against the establishment of wickedness polluting our land. Perhaps we need to march right back through the corrupt gates of our nation and seek to reestablish them in righteousness. By God’s grace, perhaps the church can inspire our young to be rebels with the cause of Christ that will prayerfully prepare the way for them to become the righteous establishment in the future. Perhaps this is a dream worth dreaming and plan worth implementing. If it worked for covenant rebels, how much more could it be successful, if the Church obeys the Lord her God?

Most of us know that judgment begins in the house of God, reformation must find its origins in God’s house as well. First and foremost the call for a GENTLE REVOLUTION must start with a return to God and His Word as the standard for all of life. Jesus stated, "It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Luke 4:4b)." Notice that Jesus teaches what we would consider as radical in today’s Church— that is God’s Word is the supreme authority for all of mankind. He did not say Christians were the only ones bound to live by God’s Word, but man, generic, the entire human race is bound also. Today’s Christian cringes at the implications of this definitive statement uttered by our Lord. The ramifications make us shudder. God actually believes that every area of life is to be governed by His Law/word. Otherwise, our lives will be built on sinking sand and we will create cisterns that can’t hold water.

This is a foreign concept to many that name the name of Christ. This is why many in the Church today justify divided allegiances, accommodate different worldviews, and honor different moral codes that stand in opposition to God’s revealed word. Guided by the culture, the Church for the most part believes certain aspects of feminism is legitimate. Many reject the patriarchal vision of male leadership. A large portion of Christians take birth control and have a similar views of children that Planned Parenthood advocates. God’s word teaches that children are His reward for covenantal faithfulness. He declares that they are a blessing and yet many in the Church clamoring for the blessing of the Lord refuse this one. Why? The children we do allow to be born (if they can escape birth control and abortion) are shipped off to day care centers and public schools. The fruit of these practices speak for themselves. Seventy five percent of Christian children reared in Christian homes lose their faith by their first year in college. What other institution could stay in business with a seventy five percent failure rate and yet the Church maintains the status quo. Obviously brethren, these things ought not to be.

Surely, it is time for a GENTLE REVOLUTION. For if we continue to live by the standards, systems, and worldviews of our enemies, we will continue to reap the world’s results. Can we not see the Church is raising a generation of prodigals? We can’t afford this deception any more. We must return to God. We must accept His Word, will, and ways as the norm for life and practice. If are thinking and lifestyle creates Christians that tend towards functional paganism, rather than Biblical Christianity, repentance is certainly in order.

May I suggest some ways we can commence the GENTLE REVOLUTION in earnest. First, the Church must reorient her thinking when it comes to the different governments God created for His glory and our benefit. We must train ourselves and children in the vital discipline of self-government. It is foundational if we desire to remain a free people. The Bible rejects the heathen notion of self-esteem, but demands we exercise self-control. Any message that seduces us or our children to believe in ourselves and follow our hearts, is a deception that creates dire consequences. Jeremiah the prophet reveals the folly of this philosophy by stating, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it (Jeremiah 17:9)?" Following this unreliable guide will continue to produce the ungodly fruit that vexes our souls today.

Secondly, we must return to God’s view of family, the Biblical role of men and women, and the vital importance of children as it relates to the spreading of God’s Kingdom in the earth. The norm Biblically is for a man and woman to marry not only for recreational purposes, but procreational purposes as well. Malachi 2:14,15 states, "Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth."

Before our modern culture, inspired by Satan, allured the Church to abandon a Biblical worldview of family government, the Church believed a fruitful womb was the blessing and a barren womb the curse. Today, however, this premise has been reversed. No children or less children is considered the blessing and poor folks like us that have thirteen are considered cursed of God.

Psalm 127:3-5 states, "Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate." As shocking as this may be to many, God believes the more children we have, the better off His Kingdom will be. God compares our children to arrows. They are Kingdom ammunition to take on the enemies of God at the gates and subdue them for His glory. One of the precious promises of the Abrahamic covenant that we are beneficiaries of today states that our children are to arise and possess the gates of their enemies (Genesis 22:17). When was the last time, if ever, that you laid hands on your children and pronounced that God ordained blessing over their lives?

Many in the Church have lost this Biblical understanding of children. Islam, however, has not. Though Christianity is the fastest growing faith by conversion, Islam is the fastest growing religion by population. This sad state of affairs attests to the fact that the Church has abandoned God’s desire to produce a godly seed to defeat His enemies. Plus, His enemies have highjacked this Christian doctrine in their attempts to dominate the world. Is it working? Take a good, long, hard look at Europe to find the answer. The once flourishing Christian West, has rejected their Christian roots for paganism, hedonism, and other isms, and as a the result, they are being invaded by Islam. What the Muslims could not accomplish through the threat of the Jihad sword, they are accomplishing through immigration and procreation.

Lastly, if your children attend public schools, wrest them back from those humanistic temples that teach false doctrine (evolution), promote the practices of abortion and homosexuality, and parade false idols before our impressionable children. Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, rightly stated, "Mankind never invented a more effectual method of extinguishing Christianity from a nation than by declaring that it was improper to read the Bible in the classroom." Besides, God did not ordain the state to teach our children; He has reserved that critical task for faithful parents. According to Deuteronomy 6:4-9, the greatest commandment is to love God and the greatest application of that commandment is home education.

As I write, there is a call for an Exit Strategy From Public Schools that is gaining momentum. There is an official Resolution being submitted in Southern Baptist State Conventions that covers the Continental United States. The call is clear, the mandate sound, and our obedience is crucial if America will secure a future and a hope. Roger Moran, Missouri Baptist leader and member of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee, states, "Although changing the hearts and minds of people is often a slow process, attitudes about how we educate our children are changing within Southern Baptist life. Increasingly we are recognizing that if we are going to profess the name of Christ, then our lives should be a testimony to authentic Biblical Christianity. Yet, how can we expect our children to have that testimony when they are "trained up" in secular public schools to have a secular mindset that excludes the acknowledgement of God and the Word of God at every point? The day is coming when Southern Baptists will see with absolute clarity that the making of disciples must include the systematic training of our children into a Biblical worldview through the education process that we now call K through 12."

This is a significant step in the right direction, if the Church is going to participate in the GENTLE REVOLUTION. The more we head in this direction, the more we will divest our culture of licentiousness and our government of tyranny. Come on Church, let us take heed to the certain sound of God’s trumpet. Let us honor Him, disciple our nation, and rescue our children’s future. The GENTLE REVOLUTION is on. Are you going to participate?

IN KING JESUS’ SERVICE,

Rusty, Kendra, and the Thomas Nation

Voice: (254) 836-1037
Fax: (254) 836-4092

E-mail: elijahmin@ifriendly.com 

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